By Jonathan Mitchell
The new sociology teacher at Peninsula College this year is Tara Martin Lopez. Lopez’s Mexican-American heritage is very important to her. Growing up in New Mexico, her relatives would use Spanish as a way of excluding the children from conversations they didn’t want them to hear. Unfortunately it was looked down upon to be a Spanish speaker, so it wasn’t passed on to Lopez and her three sisters as children. Lopez later took it upon herself to learn Spanish and, aside from the occasional code switching, she is quite fluent. Lopez said that her heritage is “One of the most important parts of myself,” and that speaking the language is for her both “political and personal.” She has worked with immigrants teaching GED prep and is currently an adviser for the PC Shades Of Color Club.
As a result, one of her main interests is inequality. Be it social and racial disparities or gender stratification.
“Sociology illuminates what we take for granted,” Lopez said. These disparities will be evaluated in her upcoming class on deviance. The class will start in January and will explore the sociology of sub-cultures and delve into things like crime.
“While African Americans are 13 percent of the population, they make up almost 40 percent of the prison population at 37.3 percent,” Lopez said. This class will try to explore the societal causes and effects that surround crime. In addition to the deviance class Lopez will also be adding a new class called Social Problems. This will be a service-learning class, which means that it will take place both in the classroom and the community.
Lopez has both a MA and a BA in history and got her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Manchester, UK. A book based around her Ph.D. thesis called “The Winter of Discontent: Myth, Memory and History” was released early this month.
Wanting to move west from Ohio, she decided to take the job at PC, in part, because of the quality of the faculty and their dedication to their students.
“It’s great to be chosen to be cohorts with such a good crew,” Lopez said.
Illuminati? 😛